Two longitudinal studies examined the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading achievement in primary grades. Results found a significant correlation between kindergarten performance on phonemic awareness tasks and second-grade reading achievement. A three-year followup of low-scorers indicated that most of those students (who were a…

Concludes that a substantial number of children in inner-city early grades do not comprehend the basic nature of the writing system, even at the end of one year of reading instruction with a phonics-oriented method. (RB)

Presents a study evaluating the effect of reading intervention with children at risk of reading failure. Explains the program spanned 10 weeks and emphasized word building and phonics skills. States there is a need for continual support as opposed to a short intervention. Includes references. (CMK)

Presents phonic activities based on brand names for teaching primary students basic reading. The first uses familiar brand-name products with rhyming elements in their names. The second has teachers write longer words that rhyme with and have similar spelling patterns to product names. Both activities help students use patterns in familiar words…

Eighty high school students from economically deprived homes in Los Angeles were trained to tutor third through sixth graders in reading. Selection of tutors was based on low reading achievement scores and teacher recommendation. Twenty middle-income youths also participated, as well as other volunteers. Tutors were trained in four 3-hour sessions…

This manual presents an English phonetic reading program based upon pictures which provide clues to each fundamental speech in the language. Pupils are thus able, through auditory and visual discrimination exercises, to match an English speech sound with its proper alphabet symbol. For related documents, see FL 003 749, FL 003 750, and FL 003…

Explores issue of whether beginning readers proceed from print directly to meaning, or whether they need to use phonological information to obtain access to the meaning of printed words. As derived from a group of children between seven and 12, results indicated that, at least at low levels of reading skill, intermediate phonemic codes are used in…

Five-year-olds learned to associate three- or four-letter abbreviations, or cues, with spoken words, in which one of the letters in the cue corresponded to a phoneme that was articulated similarly or dissimilarly. Children found the phonetic cues easier to learn than control cues, suggesting that children are sensitive to the phonological and…

The purpose of this article is to question the amount of time that beginning readers should spend reading connected text in school. Based on a study of 66 children in 26 classrooms, the authors found that children in first-grade classrooms with "less" reading of connected text achieved more in their phonics learning than children in classrooms…

This occasional publication presents three articles: "The identification of children needing compensatory education," which reviews critically some of the major research findings on approaches used in identifying the disadvantaged, and suggests that the designation of educational priority areas perhaps may not necessarily be the best…

A study investigated the relationship among reading style, instructional method, and reading achievement. Subjects were 213 second-grade students attending a large school in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area, with 84 students using a basal reader series with a phonics emphasis, 90 students using a basal reader series with a mixed emphasis, and…

This manual for teachers sets forth in some detail the direct method of teaching children to read. It has proved successful to a very large degree in the hands of teachers with no experience or teaching preparation. This manual includes: (1) History of the Method; (2) The Method Explained; (3) Principles Underlying the Method; (4) Material Needed…

This manual, designed to follow "Spanish Alphabet Book 1," presents a Spanish phonetic reading program for children beginning to learn how to read. It contains an alphabet chart with pictures which symbolize words using the sounds of the respective letters. Other pages are devoted completely to the sounds of the vowels, reinforced with common…

Various word-recognition tasks were completed by 54 second-grade students from classrooms where reading instruction followed the whole-language approach or the phonics/skill-based approach. A task involving a cloze procedure favored the whole-language approach, but there were no other significant differences between groups. Contains 30 references.…